Wearable computers are gaining popularity among consumers. Wearable computers such as smart watches, fitness wrist bands, and the like, provide a variety of utilities to a user. For example, wearable computers may facilitate tracking or recording personal information (e.g., health and fitness data, image data, location data, voice memos, etc.), engaging in social networking, or navigating, among other useful benefits provided by the convenience of wearable computers.
Although many wearable computers provide at least some sort of touch-based user input (e.g., push buttons, touch screens, etc.), some wearable computers are further configured to receive and process voice-based input, which is a convenient and popular user input mechanism. Accordingly, wearable computers are often equipped with a microphone(s) to capture audio signals in the form of sound waves, as well as speech recognition software to enable voice input through recognition of speech commands or audible gestures such as claps, fingersnaps, and the like that may be interpreted as a gesture by the computer. In these scenarios, a user typically brings the wearable computer in close proximity to his/her mouth in order for the wearable computer to recognize such speech commands. This action is taken most often in noisy environments where a user's voice may be impaired by noise present in the physical environment.
However, the act of bringing a wearable computer close to one's mouth every time that voice input is to be provided may be undesirable and is often inconvenient. In some scenarios it is inconvenient, and sometimes dangerous, to interrupt certain activities (e.g., driving and running) by performing such an action before voice input is provided.